I was actually into watching Starcraft and Starcraft II, earlier than falling off round ten years in the past. Nonetheless, over the previous 12 months or so, I’ve change into conscious of the various makes an attempt to breathe new life into the real-time technique style by way of a wide range of new video games: Battle Aces, Stormgate, and so forth. I’m unsure as as to whether we’ll find yourself seeing one other renaissance, however it has me recalling the age-old query regarding RTS: How vital ought to execution be?
I believe the apparent reply everybody can agree on is that it ought to at the very least matter a bit of. That’s what makes it a real-time technique recreation, and the diploma of significance is the place folks will debate endlessly. However I ponder whether you’ll be able to design a race inside a recreation to be much less execution-intensive with out making them both too balanced or unfair. Basically, what if this “low enter” race examined completely different abilities that have been neither higher nor worse than the others, but in addition had an inherent flaw in that it couldn’t depend on execution as a lot as others might?
I began to think about a race that will mainly be an empire with an enormous and highly effective military that’s encumbered by its sheer measurement and perhaps a little bit of paperwork. What if there was a race whose models may very well be amassed extra simply whereas additionally being stronger individually, however there was some disadvantage that saved the participant from with the ability to management them extra exactly?
For instance, perhaps there’s a cap on what number of actions may very well be executed in a given interval. This might resemble taking part in a commander who can solely oversee the broader strokes of their forces, and has to go away the main points to subordinates.
Maybe the cap may very well be over an extended chunk of time (like 700 actions each 5 minutes?), so there will be moments the place you’ll be able to management your forces extra straight, however you find yourself sacrificing the flexibility to reply extra rapidly a minute or two down the road. You’d have to decide on when you’ll be able to execute successfully, figuring out that you just’ll be extra weak at different instances, or you could possibly select to play at a gradual tempo.
One other potential method to mimic a sluggish and convoluted chain of command could be to really introduce a purposeful enter delay. This might simulate you giving orders from on excessive that take time to get by way of to the bottom ranges of the military. Possibly it has to do with controlling your forces, or it may very well be that upgrades or switching unit compositions take an extended whereas to occur.
In all these instances, the concept could be that this race will be efficient and will be tough to play in its personal proper, however it doesn’t hinge on bodily execution as a lot. On the identical time, it might enable different gamers and races who do need to use their honed macro and micro abilities to defeat this race in the event that they handle to hit arduous at weak moments. I do not know whether or not one thing like this might ever work out, however I believe there’s a method to have an inexpensive and satisfying compromise between those that need the excessive APM and real-time techniques and those that need to be methodical strategists.
